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How the Star covers breaking news

This story is part of the Star’s trust initiative, where, every week, we take readers behind the scenes of our journalism. This week, we focus on how the Star handles breaking news.

Breaking news is the lifeblood of any daily media outlet.

This photo conveys the severity of a collision that left three people dead, including two children. (Andrew Collins file photo)

The Star’s breaking news desk features a dedicated team of reporters, editors and digital producers who aim to get news out to readers across platforms, including thestar.com, Twitter and Facebook, as quickly as possible while ensuring accuracy.

The development of a story about a tragic car crash that resulted in the deaths of two children in Mississauga late Sunday provides a window into how the breaking news desk works and the ethical considerations reporters and editors face in this fast-paced environment.

Ayon Brown, 5, Keziah Edwards-Young, 13, and Canville Roberts, 40, were killed in the crash, which occurred on Winston Churchill Blvd. near the Queen Elizabeth Way.

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“When a story involves children, everything on our fast-moving team slows down, and decisions are made very deliberately,” said Jennifer Quinn, the senior editor in charge of the Star’s breaking news desk.

“We think really carefully about how we’ll proceed, because we feel we have an extra responsibility to people who are vulnerable, like kids."

At the Star, the story began in the “radio room” — a small enclosure within the newsroom that has a dedicated staff of paid interns 24 hours a day who monitor social media for breaking news and receive news tips from the public.

Word of the crash came from the Peel Regional Police Twitter account shortly after 11 p.m. Sunday. The tweet simply stated the area of the collision and that injuries were unknown.

Reporter Bryann Aguilar, who recently graduated from Humber College’s journalism program, worked to gather as much information as he could after first learning about the crash when his shift began at midnight. At 2 a.m. he reached a Peel police spokesperson, who provided basic information about road closures and about the victims, such as age and gender. At this early stage of the story, the police spokesperson told Aguilar that the ages of the two children were 4 and 12.

Digital producer Natasha Grzincic, who runs thestar.com’s home page during some of its busiest hours, arrived at 6:30 a.m. Monday and read, edited and posted Aguilar’s article.

She also selected a photo of the scene taken by freelance photographer Andrew Collins to accompany the story, being careful to ensure the image did not contain anything gruesome or offensive, but still conveyed the crash’s severity. The photo showed firefighters standing in front of the two vehicles, one of which was almost completely crushed.

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Grzincic noted that other news outlets reporting on the crash initially said the incident occurred on the QEW, which was incorrect.

“We like to be quick out the door but it’s more important to be right,” Grzincic said. “In a story like this, we always wait for official confirmation from police to include in the story before we publish.”

As the story began to gain traction on thestar.com, the newsroom was coming to life, with more reporters and editors arriving. Another radio room reporter, Alanna Rizza, who arrived for the morning shift, started gathering more information.

She called the communications departments for Peel paramedics and Peel Regional Police and learned from police that a 40-year-old man driving southbound on Winston Churchill Blvd. in a Mazda had crossed the centre line and collided with a Mercedes heading northbound. Police also told Rizza the driver of the Mazda died at the scene, and that the ages of the two children who died were in fact 5 and 13. These details, and others, were added to her update.

Barry Brimbecom, an assignment editor on the breaking news desk, edited the update and sent it online around 9:30 a.m. In an interview, he stressed the importance of approaching such a tragic situation with sensitivity.

When news is breaking, particularly news about car crashes with limited information, it’s important not to make assumptions, he added.

“We are always careful in crashes to say the cars collided — not that one hit another — unless or until the police or eyewitnesses definitively tell us who hit who,” he said. “We only reported that the Mazda had veered into oncoming traffic when that was confirmed by police.”

The story quickly became the most popular story on the Star’s website for the day. Brimbecom says he thinks of web traffic as one reflection of how interested readers are in a story.

“This one really took off, which suggested that readers were interested and wanted to know more, so we pushed to find out more,” he said.

“Stories like these are unimaginably sad for the people affected, so I always ask reporters to be gentle and respectful with their enquiries.”

Reporter Rizza continued to dig for more information into the early afternoon, and phoned the Peel District School Board, which confirmed that the 13-year-old boy who died was Keziah Edwards-Young. The school board then forwarded Rizza a letter that it sent out to students and staff offering condolences and grief counselling. This information was added to an update sent online around 2:30 p.m.

Another reporter found a photo on Facebook that they believed was Keziah but because the Star couldn’t find anyone who would positively identify him, editors on the breaking news desk made the call not to publish it, even when some of the Star’s competitors did.

“We just go with what we absolutely know for sure, or can attribute to a reputable source,” said Brimbecom.

It wasn’t until the next day that the Star published photos of the children after obtaining independent confirmation.

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